2 September 2018
XXII sunday in ordinary time – year B
The pure heart is the source of unity in us, unity with God and unity with others. Bad thoughts on the other hand are a sign of division, and they cause division in their turn.
Dt 4:1-2.6-8; Ps 14 (15); Jam 1:17-18.21b-22.27; MK 7:1-8.14-15.21-23
God is close, says Moses: “What great nation has its gods so close as the Lord, our God, is close to us every time we invoke him?” (Dt 4.7). It is our heart that stays away from him: “This people honours me with its lips, but its heart is far From Me” (Mk 7.6; cf. Is 29.13). You do not have a right relationship with God by caring about the externals of the body, if you do not know to cherish the truth of the heart. The heart, in fact, is the unifying centre of the person which allows us to overcome any false alternative between spirit and flesh, between outward gestures and inner intentions. To purify oneself means to reconcile what in us is divided, disharmonious, fragmented. The heart is also a place of encounter between us and God. God stays away if we invoke him with our lips without going down to meet him in the depths of our heart, abode of God. Finally, the heart is a place of encounter with the other, because he is the source of that love in which, for James, true religion consists.
Commento a cura della Comunità di Dumenza
Translation by f. Mark Hargreaves, Prinknash Abbey